Overview Search engine optimisation is something of a Holy Grail for web marketing – but despite what you might hear from any number of too-good-to-be-true SEO companies, there is no Da Vinci Code-style cipher that can be broken to lead you to the top of the Google rankings and on to your cyber-millions. In many ways, SEO is an art as much as a science – what works for one site may not be appropriate for another – the most important thing you can do in terms of SEO is exactly the same as for any other aspect of your web marketing – build a good site. Once you have done that – here are some other moves that might help: Content Counts The content of your site is almost certainly the most important factor for a successful SEO strategy. The copy on all pages of your site should give useful information on topics that are unique or specific to your site. Search engines usually read and index the first 500 words from each page they crawl – so make those words work for you. Don’t waffle or waste words with “marketspeak” – no-one is going to search for “the world’s leading biscuit company” they’ll just be searching for “chocolate biscuits”. Tell people what you do, what services you offer, what’s in it for them – be specific, be brief. Once your site has been running for a while, you can use search engine facilities such as Google’s Webmaster Tools, to check what search terms have been leading people to your site. People tend not to search for generic terms such as “websites”, they will use specific names and phrases, such as “SEO strategy Somerset”. Find what terms people are searching for and include them cautiously in the copy of your pages. These are your “keyphrases”. Get them in the title of pages, in the url if possible, in headlines and in the body of your copy – but not at the expense of usability. Cramming copy with keyphrases until it is almost unreadable is counterproductive. If you want to learn more about search engine optimization, read through the articles: Elements Of SEO, RSS Feeds and Search Engine Optimization, Professional SEO Copywriting Services – What They Are, And What They Aren’t. You will definitely have a high rank in the search engine results.